The sixth edition of the Accessibility Days was held at the Institute of the Blind in Milan on 20-21 May 2022. Accessibility Days is one of the most awaited Italian events in the field of digital accessibility for people with disabilities, attended by developers, designers, content creators, teachers and accessibility experts. This hybrid edition gathered 2100 registrations, with more than 900 participants attending in person in two days. The success of the event is the proof of the growing awareness and interest of manufacturers and service providers in accessibility, in view of the digital revolution that will be implemented by 2025, when the European Accessibility Act will be binding on making products and platforms accessible.
In two days, 41 parallel speech sessions and 29 workshops were held with presentations from major international software houses and businesses engaging in accessibility as well as the presentation of innovative students’ projects such as ConWeb, that developed access to digital contents with a conversational approach and EVibs, a haptic cap for visually impaired swimmers, that uses tactile vibrations to guide them.
Google, Meta and Microsoft, major information technology companies, TIM, a national major telecommunication service provider and Gucci, the famous fashion house, gave testimony of their engagement in accessibility and inclusivity as enriching elements for their production processes and commercial distribution. Also the national public broadcasting company RAI presented the services provided to make event programmes accessible.
Speakers from the Italian Union of the Blind and Partially Sighted, the Institute for Research, Training and Rehabilitation – IRIFOR and the National Institute for the Assessment of Aids and Technologies – INVAT gave their contribution to the event programme. Those institutions also provided financial support to the event.
Video recordings of the speeches at Accessibility Days 2022 are available.